Re:On Apple’s “Expanded Protections for Children” – A Person...
by api on Friday August 06, 2021 @09:21AM
(#28086777)
Looks like you’re right about Harvard. I’ve heard that claim for years but it seems to be a confusion with another member of the (large) family and controversy about Saudi money at Harvard.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden
My point is that people with money and power are far more able to execute large scale crimes, and not just terrorism. Meanwhile surveillance is experienced more and more as you move down the socioeconomic pyramid.
Apple is catching flak for this but overall their devices respect privacy more than most cheaper devices. They also cost a lot more. Your average cheapo phone or laptop comes absolutely stuffed to the gills with spyware and runs older OSes with bad security. The poorer you are, the more spyware riddled and insecure your devices probably are.
Re:On Apple’s “Expanded Protections for Children” – A Person...
by bitwize on Friday August 06, 2021 @11:37AM
(#28088629)
Bin Laden did take a course at Oxford and palled around with Britain's best and brightest of the young. So there is some connection with the West's elite universities.
Re:On Apple’s “Expanded Protections for Children” – A Person...
by heraclius on Saturday August 07, 2021 @08:59AM
(#28098266)
Bin Laden certainly has been to Oxford, but I’ve not heard of any connexion with the university.¹ I wouldn’t say that those attending language schools and similar tend to interact much with students of the university. With the exception of a few cramming programmes for admissions, the ‘best and brightest’ (I assume by this you mean those sufficiently academically able to get into Oxbridge as matriculated students—I daresay the average Imperial mathmo is brighter than the average Cambridge land economist) tend not to take courses in Oxford outside the university, since they mostly use the name ‘Oxford’ to entice gullible tourists who don’t realise that these places have nothing to do with the university.
Osama bin Laden's $30MM (per Wikipedia) inheritance from his estranged family no doubt greased some skids, but mission-driven people with charisma come from all socioeconomic backgrounds, and some of them succeed. (FWIW he did not attend Harvard, and AFAIR never set foot in the US.)
The general pattern is that the wealthy are, on average, supportive of the existing order. They are the winners of the current game. Of course there are always rebellious children who are motivated by religion or power or fame etc, but most of them are feckless due to their upbringing. And ultimately, there are so few of them.
Leadership abilities can be found across all economic strata. Most are happy to leverage their talents into moderate economic advantage, but some are driven by "larger" causes.
I would say that the intersection of leadership abilities, belief in a "larger" cause, belief in victimization, and a willingness to harm innocent people (or to blame them for their inaction against your oppressor) ... is what leads to the risk of violence against the existing order.